


The Passion of Paul Pennyfeather

by tillwehavefaces



Category: Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
Genre: AEROPLANE SEX, Age Difference, Almost Pseudo-Incest, Anal Sex, Bottom Paul Pennyfeather, But also, Drunk Sex, Dubious Consent, Filling In the Gaps, First fic in fandom, Fluff and Humor, Gang Rape, Light dom/sub undertones, M/M, Non-Graphic Smut, Older Man/Younger Man, Oral Sex, PWP without Porn, Power Bottom Paul Pennyfeather, Semi-Public Sex, Submissive Paul Pennyfeather, Teacher-Student Relationship, Vignettes, but I enjoyed writing it!, if that counts for anything, it’s hard to explain, only when he's with Potts tho, porn without plot but without the porn, smut with everything but the smut, why is aeroplane sex capitalised like someone's shouting it at the top of their lungs?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27857761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillwehavefaces/pseuds/tillwehavefaces
Summary: Peter is dynamic and Paul is static. There’s a proverb in there somewhere.
Relationships: Paul Pennyfeather/Arthur Potts, Paul Pennyfeather/Bollinger Club, Paul Pennyfeather/Otto Silenus, Paul Pennyfeather/Peter Beste-Chetwynde | Peter Pastmaster
Collections: Rare Fic, Rare fandoms





	The Passion of Paul Pennyfeather

**Author's Note:**

> Haven’t read anything else by Waugh (yet), including the ones with Peter in them, so no doubt all of this will seem horribly OOC for anyone who has. Sorry!

‘They appear to be tearing off his clothes.’

‘And now one of them is taking off _his_ clothes, too’, said Mr Postlethwaite. ‘They’re—oh, I say.’

There was a period of shocked silence in Mr Sniggs’s room, broken only by the distant shriek of Paul’s departing virginity.

‘I _say_ ’, said Mr Sniggs once he had recovered the power of speech. ‘Ought we to call the police, d’you think?’

‘Oh no, that would never do. Think of the papers!’

‘But my dear fellow, there is also _morality_ to consider.’

Mr Postlethwaite ruminated a moment on this novel concern.

‘There could be an especially large fine.’

‘The largest in the college’s history!’ beamed Mr Sniggs, inclining with alacrity to his colleague’s way of thinking.

‘We’ll be drinking founder’s port for a year!’

Once more they lapsed into silence as they savoured this glorious, nay, miraculous prospect. Grunts, jeers, and the occasional small scream floated serenely up from the quad.

Mr Postlethwaite’s pacific expression was disturbed by a cloud of what looked very like thought.

‘I say, something’s just occurred to me. Ought we to charge a flat fee—by head, so to speak, or keep a running tab and charge per each, er, entrance?’

‘Oh, the latter, assuredly. I suspect some of them will be good for several rounds at least.’

‘So, let’s say fifty of them, at a hundred pounds a pop—'

‘So much? He _is_ only a scholar. Let us not be _draconian_.’

‘Well, fifty then. Fifty pounds, and let’s say going by averages half of them have him twice. Why, that comes to...’

‘Upon my soul...’

And the two worthy dons were again lost for words as their minds struggled to assimilate this unprecedented good fortune. There rose from the quad a long, drawn-out cry, which might have been the beginning of a plea for help, abruptly choked off into a hideous gurgle.

Mr Sniggs wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘Of course, Pennyfeather can’t stay, after this shameful display. Whatever he may get up to behind closed doors, if he thinks he can carry on like this in full private view in broad moonlight, he is mistaken. We simply can’t have that sort of person infesting the hallowed halls of Scone. It would be an outrage. He’ll have to be sent down.’

‘Once he’s fit to be sent anywhere’, Mr Postlethwaite tutted. ‘I do hope he won’t die or be permanently incapacitated. Corpses and idiots are both so troublesome to pass on.’

⫷⟐⫸

His first morning at Llanabba Castle, Paul was awakened by a loud bang on his door, and Beste-Chetwynde looked in. He was wearing a very expensive-looking Charvet dressing-gown.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.

‘Evidently’, said Paul. The dressing-gown was untied and open at the front.

‘I thought I’d come and tell you, as you wouldn’t know: there’s only one bathroom for the masters. Mr Prendergast's in it at the moment, so you can’t use it.’

‘I see.’

‘And ours has no partitions, so I’ll just have to use you.’

‘I see—what?’

But Beste-Chetwynde, who had come right up to the bed, did not leave him breath to demand an explanation.

‘You know, sir,' Beste-Chetwynde remarked, after some time had elapsed, ‘there’s a sort of white stain in the wallpaper above your bed. I hope you didn’t put it there.’

Paul coughed.

‘Sorry’, Beste-Chetwynde said, but slackened neither his pace nor his grip on Paul’s hair. Paul made an urgent sound, but Beste-Chetwynde was too engrossed in his own activity to notice. Spots danced before Paul’s eyes, and for a moment everything went pink.

Happily, relief came quickly, and Paul came round to find himself slumped against the headboard, with Beste-Chetwynde astride his chest.

‘You've got lovely hair, sir’, Best-Chetwynde said, rubbing the aforementioned article and leaving glistening trails behind. ‘I’m glad _you_ don’t wear a wig.’

Paul could not answer, for his mouth was full. He dashed over to the wash-basin, then dashed back to the bed, and flung himself down with a moan. Without thinking he wiped his face on the sheets, then swore, mildly.

‘What’s the matter, sir?’ said Beste-Chetwynde, who had just done the same thing, though not with his face.

‘I have to arrange my own washing.’

Best-Chetwynde got up and vanished out the door, this time with his dressing-gown tied properly.

He reappeared a few minutes later, and tossed a couple of crisp notes onto the bed where Paul was still recovering. To be geographically precise, they fell on Paul’s belly, where they stuck. Paul stared at the boy.

‘For the washing’, Beste-Chetwynde added quickly. ‘Not for anything else.’ He grinned, an event that was equally charming and alarming. ‘I wouldn’t insult your honour.’

As he vanished again, Paul put his hands over his eyes and groaned, heard the bell for breakfast and groaned louder, then remembered what Beste-Chetwynde had said about the bathroom, and fairly sobbed.

Beste-Chetwynde was beside him at breakfast again, unlike Paul looking very bright. His chair seemed to have migrated as close to Paul’s as it could get. He seemed even more solicitous of the new master than he had been the night before, and made himself disagreeable by eagerly helping him to things, especially the milk, which Paul found he had rather gone off.

‘You’re taking me in music, you know, sir’, Beste-Chetwynde remarked, having demolished his breakfast with unaccountable zeal. ‘On the pipe organ.’

‘I haven’t forgotten’, said Paul, who was contemplating his bowl of pale watery porridge with rather less enthusiasm. ‘And keep your hands above the table.’

⫷⟐⫸

Beste-Chetwynde and Paul were seated in the organ-loft of the village church. It was their first music lesson.

‘Now,' said Paul, ‘take out your music.’

Then he stifled a squeak and shut his eyes very tight, for Beste-Chetwynde, instead of taking out his organ music had taken out his organ.

Without opening his eyes, Paul opened his mouth, undoubtedly to protest. But then there was a firm but gentle pressure on the back of his head, guiding him inexorably downward.

‘There you are, sir', Beste-Chetwynde said in a cheerful, coaxing manner, as if he were the one giving the lesson. ‘Come on, don’t be shy. You’re paid for this, you know. Now, open wide, just like at the dentist.’

Paul whimpered, but obeyed.

Beste-Chetwynde sighed, and Paul sort of burbled, which made Beste-Chetwynde bite his lip and push harder.

‘Do you think you could take a little more, sir?’ he said encouragingly, as if offering a drop of sherry or a slice of cake, though neither were in evidence. Paul didn’t actually think he could, due to the curious design in the human anatomy whereby air must go the same way down the throat as penises and other tradesmen. But Beste-Chetwynde hadn’t actually been asking.

Paul, deploying a technique he had recently acquired out of necessity, tried very hard to breathe through his nose, but found he inhaled a thicket of dense, curly hairs, which did not help matters. His eyes must have registered panic, for Beste-Chetwynde relented a few inches.

It went on that way for several minutes: up and down like a bobbing buoy, until Beste-Chetwynde grunted, and pushed him all the way down, and held him there, while Paul had to swallow very rapidly to avoid asphyxiation.

After what felt like an eternity, he was let up for air, which delicacy he gulped down in a positively abandoned manner his deceased parents and worthy guardian would have been shocked and saddened to see. Fortunately, nothing came back up. While he was heaving like a beached blobfish, Beste-Chetwynde reached over a slim-fingered hand and polished him off with a couple of efficient rubbings, of the kind he and Potts had done in antique churches and graveyards all over Oxford.

‘Was this why you had to come out here, sir? Away from everything, I mean. Just couldn’t keep out of it?’

Paul thought this question distinctly unfair, everything considered, but in any way it was impossible to answer.

‘I’m not Grimes’, he said at last, as stiffly as he could with body transmuted into what felt like blancmange.

‘Good God! I should hope not. I’m sure you’re much prettier than him. Anyway, somehow I don’t think old Grimes likes to—’

‘Let’s get back to the organ, please’, Paul said, firmly, if rather hoarsely.

Beste-Chetwynde giggled. For a moment he looked uncharacteristically shy. Then he darted a little kiss on the side of Paul’s nose, and immediately launched into a spirited mangling of _Here Comes the Bride._ Paul was rather too dazed to reprimand his pupil. He sat unhearing and unspeaking through three renditions, each more _avant-garde_ than the last, rubbing the side of his nose with the end of his pipe, much as a certain Junior Dean had been known to do. He was also wearing a smile—slight, but of quite revolting silliness.

⫷⟐⫸

What could not have been more than a few minutes after Margot departed, the door to Paul’s bedroom opened again.

‘Paul, are you asleep?’

‘Peter?’

‘That’s right, old chap.’

Paul opened his mouth, then shut it again. ‘Your mother’s just been’, he said, for want of anything else.

‘And I’m just about to’, said Peter Beste-Chetwynde. ‘Where’re the damn lights?’

Paul switched them on by gently caressing the tusk of a sabretooth tiger (possibly genuine), while Peter fumbled with his cashmere pyjamas. He appeared rather drunk, though that might have been the effect of the lampshades, which were spun from the hair of sea-reared Hebridean fisher-lasses.

‘I was waiting in the passage for Mamma to finish’, he said. ‘This way we don’t have to worry about being interrupted.’

‘Peter, I’m not sure—’ Paul began.

But the boy, his breast (among other parts) inflamed with passion, wasted no more words than his mother, and fell upon his soon-to-be step-father like the Welshman on the fold.

‘I suppose it’s only natural’, Paul reflected, resignedly arranging his limbs into a more accessible configuration. ‘All boys fall in love with their tutors, if they’re young and halfway decent-looking.’

In the meantime Peter had been busy, and Paul found reflection increasingly impossible. His toes were clenched in the suede sheets and he was holding his head very still to keep from hitting it on the reinforced concrete pillow. He felt like a bomb about to burst.

‘ _Erghlflaargh’_ , said Paul, or something like it.

‘Didn’t know you spoke Welsh, old man’, panted Peter, and then, ‘Oh! Damn!’, followed by a string of faintly Cymric ejaculations of his own, interspersed with epithets which Paul, had he had the presence of mind, would have objected to.

At last Peter withdrew and collapsed beside him on the bed, glistening all over with sweat like a roasted turkey which had been gambolling in a dewy meadow.

‘Darling', he breathed, adoring and triumphant.

‘Darling’, Paul murmured in reply, feeling unusually soppy, and just then not caring if he looked it. Peter was a sweet boy, after all.

Peter didn’t say anything for a while, just stayed sprawled on his back with his developing chest rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. Paul, by contrast, was quite relaxed, as he had had very little to do except a bit of squeezing.

The room was just beginning to lighten with the anaemic glow of dawn diffusing through the floor-lights when Peter turned over and said, ‘Well, you’ve had it both ways now. Which do you like best?’

The question was a double-double entendre, and Paul took both points at once.

‘I think', he answered carefully, after a contemplative pause in which Peter curled an arm about his waist and bit his ear, but not very hard, 'I shall enjoy being married to your mother.’

Peter nibbled his other ear, then sighed.

‘You could pay more attention to me', he said. ‘Especially when we’re with other people.’ And he pouted in a way that was unbecomingly becoming in a young man.

‘I thought you said your mother's men were awful because they got flirtatious with you.’

‘I said they were awful _and_ they got flirtatious with me. You’re not the slightest bit awful. In fact, I think I like you very much. Maybe even more than Mamma.’

Paul was unsure of the precise verb-subject relation in that last sentence and did not think it prudent to enquire. Either way, it produced a queer feeling of happiness that somehow completed what had been a very happy, if rather fatiguing, night.

⫷⟐⫸

Paul was getting very comfortable with his life at the Ritz, so much so that he hardly even missed Margot. Peter had his own suite, but so far it had not been inhabited.

On this morning he was going to luncheon with some of the many charming new friends he had acquired since the engagement had appeared in the papers. He slid out from between satin sheets, stood up, stretched, and hissed like a kettle. He turned back to the bed, where Peter, just struggling into consciousness, met Paul’s accusing glance with sheepish eyes.

‘I woke up in the night. I just couldn’t help it. You’re just so inviting when you’re asleep.’

‘I have to sit down for quite lengthy intervals of time, you know.’

‘Dear Paul, I’m ever so sorry. Why don’t you throw it in and just stay here? I’ll make it so you won’t be able to sit down for a—oh no, that’s wrong, isn’t it? I meant—’ Peter broke off into a seismic yawn.

Paul scoffed. ‘Don’t be absurd. I’ve got far too many things to arrange. I’m marrying your mother, you know.’

‘Gosh, really?’ said Peter. ‘Will you tell her or shall I?’ And he giggled huskily until Paul hit him with his trousers.

⫷⟐⫸

Paul did not have to travel to France alone. Potts was at Croydon, enveloped in an ulster and carrying in his hand a little attaché case.

‘League of Nations business,’ he said, and was twice sick during the flight.

Nor was that his only difficulty.

At first Potts had his case in his lap, but when they took off he had to put it under his seat. He fidgeted for a bit with crossing his arms and legs, but then said, ‘I say, Pennyfeather, could I have that newspaper?’

‘I’m afraid I rather happen to be reading it, old chap. This reporter’s written up my whole life story, and you know he hasn’t got a thing right; it’s thrilling stuff.’

Potts made a decidedly undiplomatic sound, and Paul looked over.

‘Oh, poor Potts, that old trouble again? Well, never mind; all you had to do was ask.’

New-wrangled wealth notwithstanding, Paul was happy to perform all the tender ministrations his friend required. It was partly for old time’s sake and partly because Potts, tall and slender as he was, had a shape that was very pleasant; almost soothing, in fact. Paul had been very attached to it, in his undergraduate days. Indeed, at one point he had half fancied himself in love, though of course that was silly. One didn’t fall in love with a—

‘Pennyfeather!’

‘Yes, Potts?’ said Paul, moving with deft and practiced skill.

‘You can’t just— _ohhhh_.’ Potts, for some inscrutable reason of state, seemed rather embarrassed, with two broad strokes of red spreading along his high cheekbones. He scrutinised a passing cumulus while Paul disposed of the matter at hand (or rather, at mouth). For a while the cosy recesses of their first class compartment were almost silent.

‘I say’, Potts began again.

‘Mhmmmflhhh?’ said Paul

‘Don’t you think we’re rather too old for—for this sort of thing. I mean, neither of us are undergraduates anymore.’

Paul blinked, confused.

‘And I had been led to believe', Potts said, sniffing priggishly, ‘that you were to be married.’

‘Oh, rell, in hat cashe’, said Paul, pulling off with a slurp. He sat back in his seat and picked up the newspaper.

It couldn’t even have been a minute before Potts started to look distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Well...’

‘Yes, Potts, what is it?’

Potts huffed hurricanically. ‘You can jolly well finish what you’ve started, that’s what.’

‘No, no, you’re quite right, Potts. We’re both grown up now, men of the world and all that. Quite able to take care of ourselves and see to our own little problems.’

‘Pennyfeather, I swear, if—'

‘No, no, wouldn’t dream of it, old boy.’

‘Pennyfeather!’

Potts fairly shrieked his name. One or two of the other passengers in the first-class cabin looked blearily round at them. Paul put down his paper with a smirk. Potts was glaring, red of face and—

‘Pennyfeather, please.’

Paul looked up through half-lidded eyes, feeling unusually and delightfully wicked. He put out his tongue experimentally, then withdrew it.

‘ _Pennyfeather_ ’, Potts repeated, half-warning, half-pleading.

Paul sniggered, but got down to business. ‘Silly old thing’, Paul thought. ‘Always so fastidious, so uptight. Just too much fun to tease.’

For his own amusement, he kept up a running commentary in-between. 'I must say, Potts, you’re just too, too troublesome. Really, we’ve only just met after how many weeks, and almost the first thing you want a fellow to do is this.’

Potts said nothing, but stared straight up at the ceiling, hands white-knuckled on the armrests as if he feared an imminent crash.

Paul switched tactics and made a series of choking sounds so exaggerated Grimes would have blushed to hear them. He had lost his gag reflex in third form, but was quite able to simulate one when occasion demanded. He wasn’t sure why Potts alone seemed to bring out this side of him. He supposed it was because he was the only person he knew who was shyer than himself about these things.

‘Oh, Potts, and you are such an awkward length, too. I shan’t be able to eat or drink anything for _days._ Maybe even weeks. I shall waste quite away and Margot will be heartbroken’

‘Shut up', Potts growled. Then, ‘Oh!’

Paul hummed happily, then straightened up and opened his mouth to show him. Potts grimaced and turned away. Paul swallowed ostentatiously, and picked up his newspaper again.

A stewardess came by. ‘Drinks?’

‘Thanks’, said Paul cheerfully. ‘I could use one.’

Potts pretended to be asleep.

⫷⟐⫸

‘Can you lend me a nail file?’ Professor Silenus asked.

‘There’s one on my dressing table’, Paul said.

‘Thank you.’ But Professor Silenus did not go. Instead he walked across the terrace and put both hands on the parapet, on either side of Paul. Then, in what was oddly the most natural movement Paul had ever seen him make, he plucked the cigar out of Paul’s mouth with his teeth, and spat it over the parapet.

‘That moustache is absolutely hideous’, he said. ‘You must shave it off at once.’

‘But people will recognise me’, Paul said.

‘Nobody will recognise you. You have an entirely forgettable face. In fact, altogether you exhibit the least variation of any human specimen I have encountered. I think that must be why people like you so much.’

Paul pondered this for a moment, and decided not to feel insulted. As the Professor gazed over Paul’s head at the twilit bay, the sea wind and the violet sunset did strange things to his pale hair and glittered heliographically over the vast rounds of his spectacles. Tentatively, hardly knowing what he was doing or why, Paul reached up and pulled them off.

The effect was extraordinary. Paul forgot to inhale for almost half a minute. Seen from up close, this newly-naked face, thin and whiter than the platinum hair the wind blew across it, marked with deep blue shadows below its iridescent eyes, drawn and wise beyond its years, was yet achingly young. This hitherto undiscovered creature, which bore not even a passing resemblance to the man the world knew as Professor Otto Silenus, was now looking at Paul in a way that was unutterably lonely and heroic and, in that moment, almost vulnerable. Paul thought that a few millimetres had made an awful lot of difference.

‘Shall I tell you about life?’ the stranger said.

‘I’d rather you didn’t’, said Paul.

‘Quite right. I know of no more utterly boring and futile occupation than generalizing about life.’

These last words were uttered so close to Paul's own lips he could hardly hear them. They didn’t talk for some time after that.

‘What was it I came back for?’ Otto said at length.

‘A nail file.’

‘Oh. Was it?’’

‘On my dressing-table’, Paul supplied.

Otto took his glasses out of Paul’s hand, but didn’t put them on. He wore an expression that on anyone else Paul would have called shy. 

'Could you show me?’

Paul looked down to hide a grin, and led the way.

‘You might sleep tonight’, he remarked, more to fill an interval than anything.

‘I hope not’, said Otto. And for the first time in the whole of his recorded history, he smiled.

⫷⟐⫸

Paul was shivering in his chair, though the fire was blazing merrily. Outside there was a confused roaring and breaking of glass, for it was the night of the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club.

Peter Pastmaster was nursing a glass of Paul’s whiskey in the chair opposite. His head was no longer too big nor, Paul noticed with a tremor, were his hands too small. He seemed to have grown admirably proportional. His skin was still very pretty, if rather rubious from drink. In all, he had become singularly handsome, and also quite tall. It made Paul feel rather melancholy.

‘Paul, why have you been cutting me all this time?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t think there was much to be gained by our knowing each other.’

‘Not angry about anything?’

'No, why should I be?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Peter turned his glass in his hand, staring at it intently. ‘I’ve been rather angry with you, you know.’

‘Why?’ It came out softer than he meant it too.

‘You know damn well why. What the devil do you mean by it, hiding away from me in this wretched hole?’

Paul, who had thought his rooms in the North Gallery the pinnacle of restrained good taste, said nothing. His eyes moved over the pages of the book he had been studying before Peter came in, but read nothing.

‘You go about with that man Stubbs now, don’t you?’ It was curious how the quite ordinary names of Paul’s friends became, in the silverspooned mouths of the upper classes, the vilest of obscenities.

‘He’s my friend’, Paul said defiantly. And then, since he couldn’t help himself, ‘We do rubbings together.’

Peter stared at Paul for a moment, drained his whiskey, then stared at the glass as if he wanted to do something brutal with it. Instead he got up and helped himself to another drink without asking, and drained that too.

‘You’re drinking rather a lot at the moment, aren’t you, Peter?’

Peter just said ‘Stubbs!’ explosively to the cupboard, then shook his head and sighed.

He sat down again, and Paul thought he dozed off. After a bit his head jerked up, making Paul, who had been watching him, start slightly. He said, ‘Anyway, Margot’s got her husband and her title and her young man—your best man he was going to be; d’you remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘Damn, I feel ill. You were my tutor, weren’t you—the organ; d’you remember?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Paul, d'you remember—' he began, then stopped, and smirked.

Paul felt his face grow warm, and resolutely fixed his eyes upon _The Face of Our Saviour_.

Peter stood up and swayed nearer, somehow ending up entangled between Paul and the chair, while _The Face of Our Saviour_ ended up on the floor.

Peter peered in unfocused horror at Paul’s upper lip. ‘That’, he said, in a tone that could only be called ‘final’, ‘has got to go.’

‘It isn’t real’, Paul said, and pulled it off to prove it.

Peter seemed to find this inordinately funny. But after a while his face became suddenly grave. ‘Paul, d’you remember why you got sent down?’

Paul made no answer. He felt very tired, and rather fragile, as if everything had caught up to him all at once.

‘Lummie of Strathdiddlywhatsit's still there, you know. He vomited in the fireplace and I pushed him into it, face-first.’

‘It’s all right,' Paul said.

‘Rotten luck, though; it wasn’t lit.’

‘It’s all right, Peter. Really.’

The look Peter gave him this time was much sharper, and at once angry and tender.

‘You never told me. That’s all right. Nobody will ever touch you again, not if I have anything to do with it', he vowed fiercely, stuffing one hand down the back of Paul’s trousers and a second in his mouth.

After a little bit Paul managed to extricate both appendages.

‘Time you went to bed, Peter, don’t you think?’

'Yes, we'd better', he said. When he got up he made not for the door but for Paul's bed.

‘You know,' said Paul, following him helplessly, ‘I’d rather been hoping to sleep there.’

Peter kicked off his shoes and settled in with a comfortable grunt. ‘You’re quite welcome to, if you like. Can’t promise that’s what _I'll_ be doing.’

Paul grasped his shoulders and tried to haul him up, but instead found himself being hauled down, and held tightly while Peter clumsily stroked his hair.

‘I’m going to be a priest’, Pennyfeather protested, though not very vigorously, it must be said. He was not an Anglo-Catholic, after all.

‘And a lovely one you’ll make, too. I’m sure the converts will come in like—well.’

‘ _Peter_ ’, Paul gasped, and attempted to twist away, but could not, for which he was not as sorry as he might have been. Peter squirmed over him until he had effectively substituted Paul for the mattress. His breath was warm and smelt of excruciatingly expensive liquor, but Paul found he didn’t mind it much. Not as much as he had minded _not_ having Peter with him.

‘I miss you. Let me.’

Paul, who never had been any good at saying no to people, let him.


End file.
